Evidence-Based Practice
for the Helping Professions


Definition of Evidence-Based Practice:
Placing the client’s benefits first, evidence-based practitioners adopt a process of lifelong learning that involves continually posing specific questions of direct practical importance to clients, searching objectively and efficiently for the current best evidence relative to each question, and taking appropriate action guided by evidence.

REFERENCES for supporting evidence and sources. To see a demonstration of EBP practiced in a hospital team, courtroom, and school IEP conference, see the CD that accompanies the book referenced below.

About Evidence-Based Practice for the Helping Professions
The information contained in this website is copyrighted. It will appear in: Gibbs, L. (2003). Evidence-Based Practice for the Helping Professions: A Practical Guide with Integrated Multimedia, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/ Cole an Imprint of Wadsworth Publishers.

Authors for This Website

 

  • Leonard Gibbs, Department of Social Work, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire;
  • Eamon C. Armstrong, MD, Lehigh Valley Family Practice Residency Program, Allentown, PA;
  • Donna Raleigh, Media Development, University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire,
  • Josette Jones, School of Nursing, University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire
Primary Audience

 

Practitioners in the Helping Professions, Members of the Helping Professions in Training in Their Research Methods and Practice Courses, Instructors in the Helping Professions Teaching Evidence-Based Practice Across the Curriculum

 
Purpose

 

To help practitioners to pose specific questions regarding practice, to help them to plan an electronic search for the current best evidence regarding their question, and to search electronically for an answer.

 
Classical Definition

 

Evidence-Based Practice is “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of [clients]”. (Sackett, Richardson, Rosenberg & Haynes, 1997, p. 2)

 

Last Updated 3.9.2007